Making GIFs

A couple of months ago I decided I wanted to learn how to make a GIF. I know you can download just about any GIF from the Internet, but that would not express exactly what I wanted to say. Anyway, it irked me that I didn’t know how to do this. So I learned how to make the most rudimentary GIF.

I used a simple, open source image manipulation program, GIMP. I do this whenever I make a GIF, or create any picture. GIMP is wonderful, although I still can’t use many of its functions. That’s changing. Now at least I can make a GIF. And I can sort of extract a picture from a background. But there’s a lot more to learn.

If you’re not familiar with GIMP, take a look at it. The program may not be as sophisticated as Photoshop, but if you have patience you can do just about anything with it.

Right now, on the spur of the moment, I’ll make a tree, blossoming. Let’s see how that works out.

I just picked a couple of generic images from Paint 3D (flower and tree) and made a few successive frames.

What I find is that when I blog, inserting a GIF sometimes adds interest. People like action. I even did this to a brain diagram earlier today. I ended up not using the brain GIF, because I thought it was a little creepy. Still sometimes this may come in handy.

Here’s the before and after on the brain diagram (this is a public domain image, NIH produced)

I was writing a blog about functional connectivity–neuroplasticity–so I thought the pulsating brain might be interesting. It was more annoying than interesting, though 🙂

Anyway, just thought I’d drop a note about making GIFs since I made a few in the last couple of days. Actually, I enjoy doing it.